


thermokarst

by besselfcn



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Disordered Eating, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Sleep disorders, Therapy, past homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 14:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14547138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: You’re a marathon runner,they tell Steve.But he’s a sprinter. Made for short-term, rapid use. He’ll probably always need to sleep more than--than a typical person.He notices that they try very hard to avoid the word normal. They do not try to avoid the wordsmadeandforanduse.





	thermokarst

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the thing, is I haven't really watched any Marvel movies made post Winter Soldier except Age of Ultron. Which means this is not even remotely canon compliant, nor does it pretend to be. It's just Steve and Bucky and figuring out what that means. If that's your thing, feel free to read on.

Bucky still sleeps more often than not.

Sometimes he gets into what might be called a circadian rhythm, in the loosest sense. Twelve hours awake, twelve hours asleep. Other times he stays up for two, three days, before crashing for four, coming out of it only when someone shakes him awake to make sure he’s eating and drinking.

It’s the cryo, they tell him. Or the serum. Or both, or the blend between the two. Blurred, inextricable lines are sort of a thing with Bucky.

 _You’re a marathon runner_ , they tell Steve. _But he’s a sprinter. Made for short-term, rapid use. He’ll probably always need to sleep more than--than a typical person_.

He notices that they try very hard to avoid the word _normal_. They do not try to avoid the words _made_ and _for_ and _use_.

\--

Natasha usually drops Bucky off at therapy, and picks him up afterwards. Steve tries, sometimes, if it’s a particularly bad day--if they don’t want to take any risks, really, about what or who Bucky’s going to feel like on the other side of the session--but he still hasn’t quite warmed up to driving in this century.

(“The car _talks_ to you, Natasha,” he’d lamented.

“Steve,” she’d said, like she was trying very hard not to hit him. “You live in a tower staffed by a sentient AI.”

“I _know_ , but...” He’d gestured vaguely, trying to get her to somehow understand. “But it’s a _car_.”)

Bucky’s down to once-a-week sessions, now. _Impressed_ doesn’t begin to cover how Steve feels about that-- _proud_ gets closer, but it’s still not enough. At first it had been round-the-clock surveillance, really, courtesy of SHIELD. Waiting for something, anything, to trigger a meltdown or a kill-sequence or a self-destruct. They’d pushed through that to every other day, a constant retuning of how to exist: how are you feeling, what are you thinking, who are you.

The last question always got him stuck.

But he did alright; he figured it out, how to answer in a way that satisfied him and the therapist both. He went weeks without Major Incidents and days without Minor Incidents and that was enough for two days a week, for a time. And now, because he wants to, because he’s stubborn, because _I spent seventy fuckin’ years asleep, I need more free time to catch up, this is bullshit_ , he’s just going Thursdays.

Natasha texts when she drops him off. Steve does what he can to pretend like he hasn’t been standing in the kitchen, twiddling his thumbs.

Bucky still laughs at him when he walks in the door.

“You should go for a run or something,” he mutters, sweeping the hair back out of his eyes. “When I’m out. You get all cagey in here.”

“It’s too cold out,” Steve says. It’s not a lie, exactly: it’s October, a tempermental month of hot flashes and cold snaps, and today it’s almost 40 out. Steve doesn’t much like the cold.

“You’re a baby,” Bucky mutters as he walks to the fridge, and starts drinking orange juice directly from the carton before Steve can stop him.

Steve watches him carefully; out of the corner of his eye, Bucky watches him watch him.

“How was it?” Steve asks.

Bucky crumples the empty carton against the counter with his metal hand, pressing down slowly like a hydraulic press. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yeah, it was fine.”

He leaves the crushed orange juice container on the counter and walks over to the couch. He vaults over, landing comfortably on his back against the cushions, staring up at the ceiling.

Steve throws the carton in the trash and meanders over.

“We doing anything today?” Bucky asks. Steve taps his thumbs together as he thinks.

“Could,” he says. “If you wanted. Didn’t plan on it.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, and he closes his eyes. Steve watches the muscles of his shoulders relax a little.

He moves around the couch and taps Bucky’s shoulder for some room; Bucky sits enough for Steve to settle down on the couch, then drops his head right back in Steve’s lap. Steve runs his fingers tentatively through his hair. “You wanna stay in?”

“Mm,” Bucky says, and his breathing’s already slowing.

\--

Steve’s watching the news on silent and then there’s a shuddering gasp, a sound that already sends adrenaline rushing through his veins, and then “Steve,” and Bucky’s clawing at his arms, limbs flailing as he fights his way out of sleep.

“Hey, hey,” Steve says, his hand on Bucky’s forehead. Warm, against the unyielding cold. “I’m here. You’re here.”

Bucky’s rigid as a board: his fists clenched tight, his teeth grinding furiously against each other. Steve holds his head in his hands and thinks he can practically watch the timer that ticks behind his eyes as he counts himself down. _Desyat, devyat, vosem._

“Sorry,” he murmurs eventually, when his mouth works again.

“Don’t be,” Steve tells him, and bites back the _Fine, huh?_ that bubbles to the surface. “Therapy?”

Bucky sighs. He closes his eyes again, and Steve thinks maybe he won’t talk about it, after all. Maybe he’ll just go back to sleep.

“We talked about him,” Bucky says, and Steve doesn’t need to ask who, not these days. And then, quieter. “You were in my dream.”

Steve feels a shudder through his stomach.

_Ten, nine, eight._

“I’m here,” he says. He brings Bucky’s hand, the flesh-and-bone one, to his face, and lets him feel the warm breath against the back of his knuckles. “See?”

“Here,” Bucky murmurs.

Steve hesitates for half a second, then kisses the back of his hand. “Here.”

\--

They do not talk about it now, any more than they did when it was 1933 and it could get them both killed.

Bucky has figured out, as Steve did once, that it’s not like that anymore. From careful observation of people on the streets, in restaurants, in movies and on television and around their own house. Steve watches him drink the knowledge in, like he does everything else: hungry, and silent, and scrutinizing.

But it doesn’t seem to matter, not as much as others think it might. It leaves them in the same place they always were: too close and too far apart and too shit-scared to put a word or three to it.

(“Must be a trip,” Natasha had commented once, after a reporter had asked Steve a question about _Bucky?_ but really about _men and women both?_ and Steve had said _yes_ and the mail they got had said _thank you, thank you, thank you._

And how is he supposed to explain it to her? To anyone? How do you say _this is not the biggest piece of the problem right now, it is not even on the order of magnitude of the biggest piece of the problem, but it is a piece, and it is a piece of you, and when you fell asleep people wanted to cut it out of you with knives and teeth and boots and when you woke up people begged you to cut it out yourself and hold it out to them so they could thank you and how is that supposed to feel like anything but a trap_.

“It’s something,” he’d said.)

At night Bucky crawls into bed beside him. He curls up behind Steve, and he grumbles until they both flip over and he can drape his one arm over Steve’s chest, and even though it doesn’t go all the way around anymore it still feels, more than anything has so far, like Brooklyn.

\--

They go to the Spy Museum.

Natasha fucking hates the Spy Museum.

“I fucking _hate_ the Spy Museum,” she grumbles the entire way, in a tone that suggests _you’d better turn this car around_ even though she’s the one driving.

Steve is neutral on the Spy Museum, most days. Bucky loves it, though. Something enticing about it, this place of gimmicks and half-truths and an exhibit much less favorable than the one installed in the Air & Space but that Bucky, somehow, likes more.

Maybe it’s more familiar to him, Natasha suggests.

Maybe he’s the same macabre kid he always was, Steve hopes.

Either way, they’ve been three or four times now. They wear their civilian disguises; Bucky even agrees to pull his hair back into a bun, which Natasha assures him is a good look for him and Steve cements by blushing like a child. If anyone recognizes them, they’re polite enough not to say. Or scared enough. It’s more or less the same thing.

They make you choose a code name, when you first walk in, off a wall with labeled placards. Bucky picks a different one every time. Natasha always picks the same one.

The only part Bucky doesn’t like is the narration over B-roll wartime footage that they show after the names, before the museum, to get you into _character_ , to set the _mood_. There’s a clip--half a second, but it’s there--of the 107th. Natasha always talks to the guards now, after the first time they went and they had to go home and schedule an emergency appointment, about letting them sit out the film. They usually agree without Steve even needing to lift the brim of his hat and flash a meaningful look.

The rest of the museum is like letting a kid loose in a candy shop. Bucky paces from exhibit to exhibit, reading museum placards, looking at names, laughing sometimes at the narration that he and Steve and Natasha all know is horribly under-researched at best. Some of the operations they’ve pinned on other spies are what Bucky considers the Winter Soldier’s best work; and even though he seems conflicted about that, when he says it, there’s something in acknowledging here that it happened that he seems to find powerful.

There’s a SHIELD exhibit, which Bucky finds the funniest. Steve cracks a smile too, at it, at the grainy photo they pulled of Stark for the Iron Man panel. Even Natasha gets amused, pointing at facts and factoids and declaring _that’s wrong, that’s almost right, that’s wrong, that’s so unbelievably wrong I think I’m going to find a staff member about it._ She never does.

There’s a HYDRA exhibit, which they skip.

On the way out there’s a whole section on James Bond. Bucky had read rapturously about it the first time, and Steve as well, for almost five minutes before Bucky stopped and stood abruptly.

“Wait,” he’d snapped. “Is this guy made-up?”

Natasha had laughed so hard the security shushed her.

When they finally leave the museum after Bucky’s had his fill and Natasha’s practically jumping out of her skin, the sun always seems too bright. Maybe it’s something else Bucky likes about the place: the dim lights, the hushed and almost anachronistic design. Steve certainly doesn’t mind that part.

And then they go out for food afterwards, which is actually the most stressful part of the trip. At least the part that takes the most planning.

Food is… complicated, for Bucky. _Fraught_ , he says his therapist calls it. He’s not used to it, yet, even after all these months. It’s too flavorful, too solid, too much all at once. And he’s working on it, but. It’s untraining decades of conditioning, one thing at a time, and food is complex enough that it’s not quite fully unpacked yet. Might never be.

Bland foods are best for him. Carbohydrates and starches. Steve’s watched him eat a whole sleeve of plain bagels, one after another. Supplemented by protein shakes and fruit smoothies, he almost has what could be called a balanced diet, or at least a diet.

When they’re out, though, he tries to get something different. He tries tacos, today, but mostly just ends up eating the tortillas.

“I know you don’t like going much, Nat,” Bucky says as he picks at his remaining taco filling. He tries another piece of ground beef, then surreptitiously spits it back out in a napkin. “Thanks for coming along anyway.”

“Whatever,” she says, but she’s smiling. “I’m just mad I have to spend my Saturday with a couple of grandpas.”

Home’s next, and Bucky’s exhausted, so much so that Steve has to help him out of his clothes a little. Only in that he helps hold him up, steadies his balance so Bucky can fumble out of his jeans and into some comfortable sweatpants.

“Goodnight,” he says, before he’s even lying down. It’s three in the afternoon.

Steve sits next to him and carefully places a hand over his spine. Bucky nods, and he runs his fingers up and down Bucky’s back.

“Goodnight.”

\--

Steve wakes up to the sound of dripping water.

His heart sinks down, down, down, into his stomach, and settles there. It’s heavy, but tractable. He can still move around it.

He walks carefully over to their bathroom. Nudges the door, half-ajar, open with his toes.

Bucky opens his eyes and stares, but doesn’t say a word.

He’s sitting in the bathtub, fully clothed, metal arm and all, submerged up to his neck in water. Steve doesn’t have to check to know that it’s frigid. Cold as it runs out of the tap. He shifts minutely as Steve walks in, cycling through tension and relaxation like he doesn’t know which one is appropriate here.

“Bu--” Steve starts.

“Please,” Bucky cuts him off. “Don’t. Say that name. Not right now.”

Steve nods, the cold seeping through him.

He pulls one of the towels off the rack and folds it on the ground beside the tub, as a cushion. Slowly, with telegraphed movements, he sinks down onto the floor. He leaves his hand upturned on the rim of the bathtub, an invitation, before he leans back and closes his eyes.

After forty-three minutes, not that he’s counting, damp and icy fingers slot between his.

\--

“How do you feel about it,” Steve’s own therapist asks him, when he finally agrees to see her again.

Steve frowns. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about it,” he says, careful.

She smiles at him sadly. “You know that’s not true,” she says, and he does.

\--

What’s true is this: Bucky is never going to be the kid he was in 1930, not now, not ever again. He won’t even be who he was in 1943, shipping off to war. He’s always going to be something different, something _fraught_ , something caught between _Winter_ and _Soldier_ and _asset_ and _James Buchanan Barnes,_   _Sgt._

What’s true is this: Steve isn’t the kid he was in 1930, either.

And he doesn’t want to be, he thinks. He doesn’t think that’s what Bucky wants, either, even though it’s hard to talk about, even though pressing him on the past is more dangerous than any dream or interview or spy museum.

He thinks, he gathers from what Bucky says, in the moments where they’re both awake, that what Bucky wants is to pretend like they were never those people. That there is no expectation that they will be.

That they are this, now, and they will not be asked to be anything else.

Steve thinks that’s something he can handle wanting, too.

**Author's Note:**

>  **thermokarst** is a land surface characterised by very irregular surfaces of marshy hollows and small hummocks formed as ice-rich permafrost thaws.
> 
> EDIT: I feel like I have accidentally oversold the Spy Museum in this fic. The Spy Museum is not worth going three or four times, or even perhaps once, unless you can get the tickets at a discount. The Spy Museum is a 4 out of 10 museum. The author is not responsible for any disappointing trips to the Spy Museum.


End file.
